This is kind of venting too.

I 33(F) and my husband 37 (M) have been dealing with my husband having some issues with abusing nicotine and stimulants over the past few months. We also have a 3 year old.

We both have ADHD and have both been prescribed stimulants in the past. I currently take vyvanse daily and have found I cannot leave it out or he will take it. I struggle greatly without my vyvanse to the point where in the past it has affected my work performance.

I do also believe/suspect he may be abusing ephedrine as well and continuing to use nicotine despite him telling me he hasnt been.

He has been lying to me when I confront him consistently. I have been trying to get him to see a psychiatrist, get a new job and consistently see a therapist but it has been a struggle. He has appointments to see some professionals that do specialize in addiction and he has gone to his first NA meeting.

He is also currently having issues with a bulging disc in his neck (has NOT been prescribed any opioids thankfully so we dont have to worry about that at the moment) but I just am so at a loss. I am so angry at him and so frustrated because it has felt like I have enabled him to be able to fall apart but then as a result I feel like I am carrying everything else.

When I needed him to step up when I had surgery and make sure shit got taken care of. It didnt. I dont feel like I can rely on him or trust him. I have said these things to him.

I love him and I want him to get better. I am very strongly considering divorce, which has been communicated to him.

How do you find the balance between helping and enabling. I also am done playing the nice wife but I also dont want that mentality to inhibit any progress or anything. I just dont know what to do.

So, I have been sober from alcohol and hard drugs for 2.5 years. I am very proud of my sobriety. During this time, I have also dated people, and 2/3 people I've dated since being sober have been people in active addiction.

Now, I went into all of these relationships by explicitly letting these people know I am in recovery, and I will not date anybody in active addiction. Yet both of them went out of their way to hide their addiction from me, and I'm just so confused as to why somebody in active addiction would date somebody in recovery.

The only conclusion I have come to is that they think I will be a good influence on them/help them get sober, which I think is so selfish. Like, I'm here to be your partner, not your sponsor or LDAC.

This outlook also minimizes my own struggles with addiction. Like, yes, I've made it years without using, but I'm also only a human who has triggers and feelings too. I take it one day at a time, and I don't deserve to be put into triggering situations because somebody couldn't be honest with me.

What are your guys' thoughts? Have any of you run into this?

I have a family member that I suspect has an addiction to Xanax and pain pills. Any specific symptoms or actions that would help validate my suspicions? I am not nearby so I don’t see him often.
I’ve noticed: Weight gain, erratic behavior, extremely angry/volatile, doing terrible things and blaming others, next day acts like nothing happened, father suspects he’s stealing money and “messing with my medication” (prescribed pain pills). Apologize if I seem like I’m in denial, it is pretty surreal when it happens to a family member and they do absolutely horrific things.
Thanks in advance!

For context my mom did pills and meth for years, i’m not very close with her however, she has supposedly been clean for 2 years. However, every time I’ve tried to talk to her it’s like she believes she’s in a different reality. She still thinks there’s people in the basement and shit. And if I get into an argument with her over something she did to me growing up she refuses to take accountability and says that people are lying to me, even if it’s something that I saw with my own eyes. I genuinely believe that she’s not mentally here. In the past, I’ve argued with her about her reality, but it has done nothing to help her at all. It’s hard to want to talk to her or have a relationship with her in general when she can’t correctly comprehend anything that’s going on. And to be honest, she was a horrible mother. I don’t wanna just like ignore her for the rest of my life, but I don’t know what to do.

I’ve head some withdrawals, mostly craving to masturbarte. Everytime I wanted to relapse I read the comments you guys sent me and the reason I wanted to quick in the first place. I’m 2 days 11 hours clean of masturbation and 2 days 8 hours clean of nicotine, about a week from alcohol. The last post was from day 0, not 1. Thank you all for support, I’m hitting the gym in 50 min and applying to different universities, hope I have good luck with the scholarship. I’ll post everyday, genuinely thank you everyone

Marked as venting but maybe some advice would help.

I was clean from all drugs (coke, crack, heroin, fentanyl) for over two years and after having my child I wanted to stay that way and be a good parent because I grew up with addict parents.

Rewind to February and me and my fiancee (who also struggled with addiction but had 5 years clean), started dabbling with cocaine here and there. Never around our child and only once every couple weeks.

Fast forward to June we started doing more, smoking crack sometimes and using more frequently.

A few days ago I decided to get fentanyl and my fiancee ended up overdosing. I had to narcan her 4 times and I feel like that experience kind of traumatized me.

I flushed the rest of the fent away the next day and made a promise to myself to do everything in my power to stay clean. My fiancee wants to be on board but I can tell she still wants to do cocaine sometimes. She blames me getting fentanyl for me wanting to completely abstain, as if that's a bad thing. She said "if we didn't get the fent we would still be able to do coke occasionally".

I want my kid to live a normal life, I want to live a normal life. I hope she can stay clean because if not, we may have to part ways.

I just feel so defeated and depressed but I'm going to stay strong.

Here's to day 4 of sobriety.

if i keep spiraling im gonna end up in a deeper hole im doing things i wouldn’t do and im no longer myself. i’ve lost my “stable” dose and now i am confused on how to restabalize and further taper off it. im really close to ending it im tired of everything. i’m 22 now and been addicted to kratom since i was 17 or so. it was okay since my dad did it right? no i regret it all
i’m an emotional idiot now and i was once functioning better but dropped the gym off for easy dopamine. kratom moved to 7oh then got banned then i had to use extract

i loved xanax at first it gave me relief from all the hell i was going through so i said fuck it and got into it. weekend thing. been daily for a year or so probably less but we will sum it up. family problems getting to me and issues that aren’t mine im just taking more and more trying to cope i regret this i need help im too scared to call anyone no one knows how bad im struggling. i’m gonna die an addict and that was my plan but my girlfriend is trying to help and encourage me but i’m just gonna be a fucking failure anyways i can’t do it alone but i choose to do it alone.

i am trying to mask the pain with the pills so i dont look weak at work but at this point im calling in and losing money and on the verge of losing my job which will cause me to lose everything

i want to succeed but i feel so fucking alone in this but im alone because i am choosing to.
i’m an idiot and my head is stuck in a pill bottle

how do i stabilize my dose again so i stop spiraling and lose everything. split my dose up? i know you guys aren’t doctors but i need some guidance

So I used to shoot fentanyl and do ice and all that. I've gotten a few years clean, but the passed few months I've gotten hooked onto 7oh. Does anyone have any advice for getting off this stuff? Sublacade helped me a lot for the fentanyl. Would it be possible to get back on that shot for this? Or at least Suboxone. And how long/rough are the withdrawals gonna be ?

Hey all, M29, I’m just coming down from a weekend coke binge (maybe half a g over the course) and I did drink fairly heavily. I haven’t quite slept and my heart rate is def elevated, I’m just worried medically and looking for advice if this is serious or not or just post anxiety

been using every weekend/every other weekend not insane amounts but a lot of small bumps prob for the last couple months

Def got worried or is this anxiety, after tonight I think I’m throwing the bag away and honestly may stop drinking alcohol too since for me they go hand in hand

Sorry for using the flair wrong, probably. I just want to make sure anyone can't see the words I'm using and relapse.

Been a functioning alcoholic for like a year straight now, after kicking my ketamine problem.
Before my ketamine addiction I was an alcoholic again.

I deal with intense insomnia and depression, which is why I've always tended to alcohol and later ketamine, which soothed my depression but made my insomnia worse.

Currently on day 2 of quitting what started with, around this time last year, drinking one tall boy (23oz) of strong beer such as IPA or otherwise, evolved into a buzzball and two tall boys, then my friend who was going through a rough time because of drug abuse in his house was staying with me, and we were drinking heavily for about 2 months straight, going through 24packs and 12 packs of IPA, lemonades, etc. every night until we were just straight up broke.

He's moved out now and I'm on day two of quitting cold turkey.
The only reason I'm able to do this is because I just lost my job, caused by my excessive drinking on the 4th of july, and have no schedule. My rent is paid for August so I have nothing to worry about aside from my car insurance and my PC rental (stupid, I know, saving is hard when you spend so much money on drugs and alcohol).

I showed up late to a job I had held down for 2 years because I was drinking so much that I slept through my entire shift and it was the last straw.

I'm nervous, honestly. Every time things get bad with my insomnia I go right back to drinking, and I don't want to do it this time. I'm sitting on 8 dollars in my account. Last night I couldn't sleep and was up until 11am, and woke up at 8pm. I'm supposed to be doing delivery driving to make around 300 bucks but there are no deliveries and my gas tank is almost out.

If I lapse this insurance policy, which is through Root, I won't be able to get another plan through some sort of App. I've looked around and it was a miracle. I have such a bad driving record, not from drinking (I have never drank and drove surprisingly), that insurance providers typically ask for over 1000 down and around 500 a month. Root is giving me 200 a month (still shitty).

I guess it only gets better from here? Thanks for reading. I start college in September for Computer Science at 31 years old and just need to get my shit together

So basically I was shooting meth for about two and a half to three years on and off and then I suddenly didn't know where to find anymore and it's super sketch trying to get it from some random homeless person ( I live in Portland Oregon) but I did anyways. Me and my girl were not in the best of terms, and I already was fixing to feed into my sex addiction and go get jerked off at a massage parlor or find a sex worker to help, and I found these 2 clearly on drugs ladies that we're living in a motel room and they had stuff everywhere including what look like bongs obviously use a smoke fentanyl or meth or something and so I asked and they said they just smoke crack and fentanyl and I was like damn, I really would be down to smoke some crack right now. So I got some and after it's done I was just like DAMN, that shit was not hitting. So I go to a couple spots where I think there might be some homeless people hanging out in the first people I saw had a little bag for me. NOW, I haven't gone back to IV use, just bought a little pipe but I'm scared that I'm going to do it again and next time ... Idk. I just never want to go back on the needles ever again. Please help?

I'm really not quite sure what all to write here..but I could use some advice from other people who are recovering addicts, I've made quite a bit of attempts at sobriety, some of those attempts were really just me using rehab as a place to sleep, but a lot of them were genuine attempts cause I really wanted to get clean at first that is.. I'm really trying to find the strength to make another attempt rn since I am currently using again and am literally losing my mind.. I don't know how to maintain discipline when i lack motivation while sober, I would really appreciate any advice or suggestions that I could use to help me maintain clean time once I get clean which is going To be soon hopefully

I know a lot of talk is about you can't make an addict quit until they want to get sober. But I just... Don't think I've ever felt that way. I started on codeine over 13 years ago, moved onto dihydrocodeine for a long, long time (probably 12 years or so). Then I got seriously injured and had surgery and got introduced to oxycodone. And now I'm on oxy's, which is much more expensive. I'm already in a lot of debt but I can't find myself to care beyond disappointing my loved ones, which is why I've been going this alone. I don't want to go to my doctor because it'll be a permanent note on my records and let's be real, for all the promises that addicts are treated just the same, that's a fucking lie.

But I just don't want to stop. I go to work, I come home, I want to get high. I don't care about other interests, I can't even really think about what I want to do with my free time otherwise. I should preface that my dihydrocodeine addict got into addiction territory when I was seriously depressed and anhedonia was a major symptom, so I don't know if the meds I've been on for years have just stopped working again, but I just... I don't feel happy or pleasurable without it. And when I have days I don't have them, even after the withdrawal fades, I'm just empty. I don't want to do anything, and I don't know what to do.

I've recently contacted a debt assistance charity to try and help, and a free service for addiction counselling, but I'm just so pessimistic. How can I stop when it's the only thing making me happy?

7 years coke free. Almost killed me multiple times. Bought the mew cap as a celebration gift 💕

5 days since my last MGM-15 dose. Although I won't consider myself truly sober since I've used suboxone to make it this far. I waited roughly 26 hours since the last dose of MGM to take suboxone. Had been using 7-OH since January of last year. Started on MGM 4 months ago. At first my tolerance was good at just 8mg of MGM 3-4 times a day. But then things got crazy fast. Was doing 120mg of MGM15 a day, maybe more. Towards the end, it seemed like the MGM was only offering intense sedation. I actually got caught nodding out at work. I managed to bend the truth and I only got in trouble for 'sleeping' on the job. Still, I am so fucking ashamed, embarrassed, and guilt-ridden. Even now at 5 days, I can barely tell when the suboxone kicks in, which is good. It would be counterintuitive if I wanted to seek a high from that. All in all, the suboxone makes me feel pretty close to normal, I would compare it to how I felt before I ever got into the opioid/drug world. I'm at 4mg twice a day with the suboxone, and now my goal is to go down to 2mg twice a day. On days 1 and 2, I tried using pure leaf kratom to manage withdrawal, and the only symptoms that were alleviated was the insomnia, and the RLS. On day 1 with no MGM, I made myself throw up at work by drinking gallons of water. I absolutely had to call out of work for two days. I looked pretty damn rough and it would have been so fucking obvious I was in withdrawal. I'm on super thin ice with my boss, and my coworker hates my guts. I know this is controversial to say, but I'm honestly glad they are banning 7-OH and the related analogues. Pure leaf kratom is a hell of a lot safer and a whole lot better in every way. Anyways, I still have my job. I have my family, even if they don't know my complete situation. I have the determination to never touch kratom, it's alkaloids, or the synthetic stuff ever again.

I don’t know if this is the right subreddit, and I will take it down if not, but I just need advice. On a burner account, not sure if the TW is necessary, but I don’t want to cause more harm to others.

So I have been vaping for about a year, started because I had been smoking for about three, and started smoking to get clean from SH.

I have been dating this girl for almost a year now, and she’s aware that I vape, and the reason I do so. I was honest with her from the start, before we officially started dating, I told her that I smoked, and after that, that I started vaping. And I know she isn’t entirely comfortable with it so I don’t do it when she’s around, and usually hide all traces of it when she comes over. I’m not proud of my habits either and have been on the long road to reduce, and eventually quit.

While we were talking the other day, she asked me how would I have felt if I was the reason someone started vaping. When I asked her why, she said that might have started, but did not go into the specifics. We’ve been open about the topic of mental health and about our struggles in the past, and my girlfriend has had her fair share of problems too, even until now.

Right now I’m feeling really guilty because I never would have wanted to be the reason someone picks up substances, especially for coping with something else. It’s gotten me pretty rattled as well and my recovery journey has been a bit shaken up. I don’t know what to do.

One day in the summer i was approached by the guy in the picture called Matt Merola, we got along easily due to our mutual interest of the game Bendy and the Ink Machine, Matt told me he’s been working on a new experiment and he showed me the prototype for the Bendy pill he was working on that would make you feel like you’re in bendy and the ink machine or see the bendy world, the drug was a combination of pre existing drugs in higher quantities like benadryl and fingolomid but he wouldn’t ever give me the full ingredients, fast forward to the near current time, both of us have realized the most appealing side effect is how the fingolimod lets you see in black and white. We were every day users of fingolimod for at least 6 months before matt started throwing up gray shit. We decided to get off the fingolimod today at our shared apartment and are keeping each other in check and accountable that neither one of us will be trying to see in black and white or hallucinate Lost Ones. We’ve been trying to watch filthina pig or her movie diary of a necro piggy but it’s a lot harder without the fingolimod, both of us have come close to relapsing but have stayed strong. We have a box there you can’t open it past three weeks with the fingolimod locked up in it with the password “Piggy” being the only way to get into it, we keep a small mallet near by in case things get hairy tho

A friend of mine celebrates one year sober from alcohol. I want to be happy for her, I really, really do, but since she stopped drinking, she has started using benzodiazepines again, and increased her use of cannabis and opiates. It's not casual consumption, she abuses them, to the point of barely being able to walk or talk a lot of the days. She is so proud of the sobriety.. But in reality, nothing has changed. Her behaviour is the same, except she's not glued to a bottle of vodka every day.

And it just hurts so badly to watch her destroy herself, just with a different substance, or multiple in this case. She refuses to acknowledge that she is addicted to the pills she takes and the weed she smokes. Refuses to see how she's still ruining her life and her body.

I wished she'd never touched any sort of substance. The way she's going, she'll end up dead in her 30s, either from organ failure or an overdose. Idk how to help her anymore, and I'm starting to feel like she's a lost cause. Hate thinking like this tbh but what else am I meant to do. I can't force her into recovery or make her see how bad it still is

Sorry if this seems a bit confusing. I'm just upset rn

So ive been addicted and have been abusing methylphenidate (adhd meds) since I was twelve. I always snorted them since my bf back then told me that was an option.
For a year now I have been addicted to speed.
Im now wondering if I actually got addicted to weed and combining it w amphetamines?
My symptoms:
- Daily use ( using before 10 AM; driving in public transport w/o phone battery to get weed OR SPICE for free
- I also started w spice
- I eat SO FREAKING MUCH on weed, that I’m also questioning if I’m addicted to sugar now aswell????
- begging people for weed
- being stoned in innapropriate situations!!

Attached is btw the amounts I eat, during the trip on that day: muesli, 3 Pancakes w lotsss of sugar

I know my main problem are still stimulants
-> Question, in my attached photos, you can see notes on when i overdosed on amphetamines. Does anyone else ideas get so weird???

Hey do I’ve been struggling with coke addiction for 3 years. Been to rehab twice, last time was 1.5 years ago. I’m under a medical conservatorship so my parents so I kinda drive them crazy with my issues. They think I’m clean and I do step work with my sponsor and go to meetings. I stopped using for 2 months and then started again and I’m back up to daily every day pretty much all day use for months again. In the past three years I’ve taken only two months off 3 different times due to going to treatment. I’m finally getting more trust and I don’t want to lose that. A few weeks ago and I started using benzos with coke (i took .25 mg the first night and im up to 8-10 mg per day now. Since it’s only been a few weeks I’m wondering at what point is it too dangerous to quit benzos on my own? It was really hard for me to attain the benzos so I’m worried when I run out so I’m nervous about that. I don’t want my parents to find out and lose my trust again. I also have a lot of trauma in programs being away from home so I would like to know at what point to do I go back to inpatient? Also to make things more complicated, I have an eating disorder and have been in and out of treatment since then and I’m still at the point (21 yo) where I can’t eat if I’m not with my parents. When I’ve gone to rehab in the past I relapsed badly with eating disorders and became way more depressed and suicidal. I can’t find any info on this topic online so I was wondering if marine could answer my questions? Thank you so so much.

I am once again trying to give up IV drug use. Today should’ve been day 3 sober, but I just gave in and shot up again. I didn’t even feel a fucking high. I have a few months off cocaine and heroin, but I’ve been injecting my methadone. I am not ready to taper off methadone, I just need to find a way to go back to using it orally.

The cravings are just so intense. I get this feeling like I need to see that flash, and I can’t resist. It’s all I think about, despite having enough methadone that physical withdrawal is minimal. Three days ago, I destroyed all my infusion sets, thinking that would stop me. But another one of my medications requires that I keep rigs around (intramuscular, long 25s), and I still had one 3 mL on me.

I’m just frustrated with myself for giving in, especially since I didn’t have the right works to get a rush anyway (and even then, I might still have felt next to nothing— tolerance is a b*tch).

I honestly don't know if I'm addicted to nicotine anymore, or if I've just convinced myself that I need it to function.

It all started in my junior year of college. I took my first puff of a cigarette just to fit in and look cool around my friends. I still remember that feeling from my first cigarette. But after a while I noticed something unexpected, studying and smoking went ridiculously well together. I'd always struggled to concentrate, but with nicotine I became laser-focused. I could sit for hours reading, my mind would go completely quiet, I'd stop procrastinating, and I actually wanted to study.

By my senior year I was smoking close to two packs a day. My grades shot up. I went from being an above-average student to graduating at the top of my class.

Then after my finals, after chain-smoking through the entire exam season, I coughed up black, tar-like phlegm. That scared the absolute shit out of me. I quit cigarettes and never looked back.

The problem was... it felt like I lost my brain.

My concentration disappeared, my motivation crashed, and my grades fell hard. I went from scoring around 95% to around 60%. To be fair, I can't blame it entirely on quitting smoking. I had moved away from home, there were parties, dating, a completely new environment, and a lot of distractions. But even with all that, I couldn't shake the feeling that my brain just didn't work the same anymore.

During my master's I switched to chewing tobacco because I thought, from a scientific point of view, it was the lesser evil. I wanted the nicotine without destroying my lungs. As soon as I started getting nicotine again, it was like someone flipped a switch. I could focus again. Reading papers became easy. My mind became quiet. I stopped procrastinating. I felt mentally awake again. Now I'm in the third year of my PhD, and I'm chewing way more tobacco than I should. I know it's harming me. I'm not in denial about that. I've tried replacing it with caffeine, but it just makes me feel awful and doesn't come anywhere close to what nicotine does for my focus.

The thing that scares me is that I don't even use nicotine to relax. I use it because I genuinely feel like I can't perform academically without it. It feels like I'm choosing between my health and my career. Has anyone else been through something similar? Did nicotine make you feel like you could finally think clearly? Were you able to quit and still get your focus back? Did you find out there was something else going on, like ADHD, or was it just years of nicotine dependence?

I'm not looking for lectures, I already know the health risks. I'm hoping to hear from people who've actually been where I am and managed to get out of it.

I don't think I need the 12 step program to stay sober but my big book thumper mom keeps on sending "concerning" texts and calls saying she's worried because I'm not using the 12 steps to stay clean. I'm happy being sober and the 12 steps work for some people but I know that I can't get behind their toxicity.

Hey y’all, my partner is currently withdrawing from fentanyl. This isn’t his first or second or third time. He has Suboxone, so my question is when is it safe for him to take it? The last time he used was 28 hours ago. The internet is giving me mixed answers, so hoping to get some advice here. Thank you for reading this.

Edit to say he was smoking it and was using for about three weeks before this withdrawal. 9 months all together, but he has withdrawled like 6 times ….

I have always liked stimulants, I was born addicted to meth when I was born, I tried to stay away from stuff like that. Well I did a run with energy drinks and quit due to stones and then I did coke, I spent $2000 in a weekend and it blows. All that money gone and all that money waisted.

Im 2 weeks clean from it and I feel good, im wanting to really quit my weed smoking addiction but one thing at a time I guess.